Tag Archives: awkward food photos

Awkward Food Photos Salad With Bean Dip

It’s the end of summer and I bet you’ve been eating a metric tonne of salads like I have. Sometimes salad looks pretty with vibrant colors and fresh rawness. But sometimes salads create awkward food photos.

Maybe you’ve had a can of Trader Joe’s cannellini beans in your pantry for almost 2 years and it is time to use them up. Maybe you don’t want to turn your oven on because it’s 95 and sweltering in your third floor Brooklyn walk up that is nothing like that jibber jabber they present in Sex in the City. Maybe you still have Chloe’s Kitchen because it’s too damn hot to walk it back to the library. So maybe you decide to make the garlic bean dip in it and learn that it’s a bit too garlicky for your tastes. So you dump it on your salad and can’t wait to blog about your newest creation, Artisan Bean Dip Salad. But just look at that unappetizing pile!

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You need to put some text on there! Call it a super food. Nutritionists like Ginny Messina may talk about the iron in beans but did you know they have 1 gram of proline per 100 grams of dried beans? What about that 2.060 mg of niacin? Let me tell you, proline will be the next big thing in the super food world. Get on that bandwagon now!

Awkward Food Photos Avocado

Avocado, is there anything you can’t do? Tasty when eaten with a spoon, tasty when mushed up and eaten as guacamole, tasty when stuffed into the center of sushi.

This humble little fruit, which also goes by the name alligator pear, is so versatile and fun! But for food photography? The avocado is not always the belle of the ball. Dark green in color, oblong, lightly textured. Those words simply do not pop with fun.

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Jump in on the latest food photography trend! Put a bunch of other things into the picture to highlight and complement all that is the avocado. Beans are popular; make sure you artistically strew a few outside your tiny bowl. Include your drinking glass in the back. An end of garlic completes the photo. It doesn’t quite fit in and leaves the viewer wondering what exactly will be happening. They’re hooked and will keep coming back to your blog for more!

Awkward Food Photos Soba Noodles

Soba noodles! I love them. Quick cooking and good tasting, they come in neat little bundles that are perfect for tossing into stir fries.

Soba noodles share a similar awkward food photo problem to the veggie burger mix we saw last week: they are a grayish brown color. But even more alarming, the straightness of the bundle while sitting on the counter presents a rather stark angle with the grout lines on your tiled kitchen counter. This isn’t the Van der Rohe Farnsworth House and the year is not 1950. We need some curves, some movement to our food.

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Bring in that macro setting on your camera and go in for the noodle end close up! Stunning! Look at that curve! It says, “I defy the grid. I will not be bound by tile grout!”. The noodle ends are messy and reflect our contemporary life.

Awkward Food Photos Veggie Burger Mix

If you are a connoisseur of a good veggie burger as I am, then you know a burger mix is not always the most food photogenic thing one ever did see. I recently got Chloe Coscarelli’s Chloe’s Kitchen from my local public library and was immediately intrigued by her double double drive thru burgers. I like tempeh and I like lentils, so I decided to give it a whirl.

This is a super easy burger recipe to put together, but does require a food processor. You basically mix all the ingredients in the processor until it comes together into a mix that can be formed into patties and pan fried. Simple! But that burger mix turns a light shade of gray-brown and looks like a pile of mush when it comes time to document it for the blog.

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Photograph that Rubbermaid container on a slab of wood! Remember, wood is good! If you have a rustic wooden background, it will completely complement that burger patty mix. Look at it pop! The juxtaposition is striking. Try it with your awkward food photos!